Muckbeast

The pet rock was a fad in the mid 1970s created by ad executive Gary Dahl.  The concept was a hit for a few years, making Mr. Dahl millions of dollars before it died out. Pet rocks can be found occasionally on eBay, but they are no longer “manufactured” or sold. The pet rock was a flash in the pan fad. I imagine many of you have never even heard of the pet rock. Conversely…

The Rubik’s Cube is celebrating its 30 year anniversary. It was patented in 1975 in Hungary as the Magic Cube (the same year the Pet Rock came out). In 1980, it was exported to the US and renamed the Rubik’s Cube. Since 1980, more than 350 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold. It is the best selling puzzle game of all time. It clearly has longevity as interest has spanned multiple generations.

So what about professional gaming? Is it a pet rock-like fad, or a Rubik’s Cube like phenomenon with staying power. Thirty years from now, will people sit down and watch the equivalent of Starcraft matches like they watch football or baseball today? Will schools have gaming teams? Will colleges offer scholarships for people to PLAY games? Will there be a market for hundreds, or even thousands of professional gamers to make their entire living just by competing in gaming tournaments?

And for those of you who think the answer to some or all of those questions is yes, perhaps you want to learn how to become a professional gamer. Get training!

Permadeath was never a tremendously popular feature in MUDs, but it was common enough that it did have a certain following. Some players consider permadeath a vital component of roleplaying, and they feel it adds a significant amount of excitement and tension to a game.

I certainly understand why no commercial MMORPGs have experimented with the concept, but my question is whether it will EVER happen on a commercial MMORPG?

If it does happen, what type of gameplay elements would be required? I would think that to be successful, a permadeath game would have to focus a lot more on the experiences than statistical or gear based character development/advancement. I think for the sake of continuity, such a game would need some sort of achivement or unlocking system where some of the accomplishments of previous characters were either retained in some way or at least recorded in a meaningful manner.

What are your thoughts?

Maybe some fellow bloggers can help me out here. My WordPress dashboard says:

WordPress 2.9.1 is available! Please update now.

So I click the link, choose the [Upgrade Automatically] option, and eventually it gets to this:

Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.9.1.zip.

Unpacking the update.

It churns for a few minutes, and then stops. But it is not upgrading. I’ve always done the automatic upgrades in the past, and all my recent plugins upgrade just fine. What are my options at this point for trying to get this update completed?

If you aren’t reading The Psychology of Video Games blog yet you are missing out. Between that site and a few other blog posts I’ve read recently (like Wolfshead’s lament about WoW’s Growing Immersion Deficit) I was motivated to write an article about designing group contest events in MMOs. This is just a small part of my general belief that MMO developers right now focus entirely too much on static content and not enough on all the potential fun things that can happen in a virtual world or an online community.

Engaging Players – Desgining Group Contests for your MMO Players

Read, enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

League of Legends is an MMO RPG/RTS inspired by the Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients (DotA). It also includes RPG elements in the form of a summoner character that gains levels, trains “abilities” called masteries, and gears up with runes.

Check out this review of League of Legends MMORPG/MMORTS.

Let me know what you think of the review and/or the game.

I read a couple of really good blog posts recently that I highly recommend:

From Spinksville:  You cant heal stupidity!

and

From Bio Break: The Long, Hard Road to Console MMOs

and

From Elder Game: 2009: A year of Shitty MMOs.

For reference, you might find this post from Bio Break really useful: MMO Timeline. It includes dates of every major MMO’s release, expansions, and in some cases, cancellations.

Read them, enjoy, and feel free to share your comments there and/or here.

I recently published an interview with Andrew Cowan, founder and administrator of The Mud Connector.  If you are not familiar with TMC, it is one of the most important web sites in MUD/MMORPG history. It was the first major MUD search engine/community web site. It helped millions of gamers find an online home.

The Mud Connector – A Vital Resource in MUD and MMORPG History

You owe it to yourself to read the interview and learn a bit about this really important web site in online gaming history. And its not just a dinosaur – the site still gets about 100,000 unique visitors per month.

I just learned of this and it is sad news. Near Death Studios, the indie game company behind the resurrection of Meridian 59, closed down on December 31, 2009. One of the founders of Near Death Studios (Brian “Psychochild” Green) is a respected colleague and frequent reader of this blog. Brian announced the closing publicly on his blog.

I am (ok, almost) always sad when a gaming company closes its doors. It means people who passionately devoted their creative energies to something had to stop. Brian wrote that Meridian 59 will continue to operate, which is a good thing. But it is a shame that Near Death Studios will not be there to oversee it.

Best wishes in their next endeavors to Brian and others associated with Near Death Studios.

League of Legends is a game based on the Defense of the Ancients map for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. It is a competitive, player-vs-player, RTS-RPG-MMO hybrid.

This glossary defines some basic terms related to the game that can give you an idea about the game as well as help you get started. Knowing the lingo of a game is always very helpful.

League of Legends Glossary of Terms

As many readers here know, in addition to owning and running a gaming company, I am the Managing Editor of the MMO and Nintendo Wii channels at the technology web site Bright Hub. Bright Hub recently broke the top 1,000 barrier for busiest web sites on the internet, and as a result my article budgets have been steadily increasing.

To fill these opportunities, I am looking for some new writers who would like to write articles, reviews, analysis, guides, etc. about MMO or Nintendo Wii games.

The system is very flexible. You would get to research and pitch your own articles, and there is no minimum commitment. I have some writers who write 20+ articles per month, and some who write one article every few months.

Bright Hub pays an up front per article fee, and also gives the writer a significant share of the advertising revenue generated by their articles. The revenue share continues indefinitely. I’ve been with them for over a year, and it is a good system. This is an excellent opportunity to make some money writing about your favorite subject (games!) before the holidays.

If you are interested, send me an email at mhartman@editors.brighthub.com.

Thanks!